Because in this period Locke was very busy with his work for the first earl, and was further plagued by illness, which forced him to travel to the Continent, most of his efforts for Lord Ashley were by indirection, through Mrs. Birch and others. Whatever its benefits and failings, this phase of Lord Ashley's life came to an abrupt end when his grandfather, late in November 1682, was forced to flee to Holland, where he shortly died, and Ashley was sent by his father to Winchester College, where he stayed about two years. No one can tell what the impact of his earlier isolation was, but it must have been reinforced by his miserable years at the college. The first experience involved physical separateness; now he entered a larger world and found it intensely hostile toward him. The college was High Church and strongly Royalist, and there were very few friends indeed for a young man already too thoughtful, who sprang from a line connected with Dissent, populist in sentiments, and republican in its political thought.
Though he was too young to have completed his courses in public school, we find Lord Ashley in London in 1686, studying with a remarkably intelligent and capable Scot, Daniel Denoune.
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